“The Secret State of North Korea” airs Tuesday night at 9 on Panhandle PBS.

It looks at the secretive Marxist state using hidden cameras, secret videos and interviews with North Koreans who talk about life under the regime of Kim Jong Un, the young despot who inherited his high office upon the death of his father, Kim Jong Il.

In recent days, North Korea has exchange artillery fire with South Korea. No one’s been hit. The rounds have been fired into the Yellow Sea. However, it’s yet another display of antagonism between the nations that never have signed a peace accord once the shooting stopped during the Korean War — in 1953. For 61 years, the nations have lived under the terms of a mere armistice, meaning that war could break out at any moment, and it nearly has on more than occasion since the last shot was fired during the Korean War.

As if the world doesn’t have enough hot spots, another one has reopened for the umpteenth time on the Korean Peninsula.

Frontline will show us just why the world needs to take North Korea seriously. Its leader marches to a cadence no one else hears.